reconnecting cities to the biosphere: stewardship …...reconnecting cities to the biosphere:...

Reconnecting Cities to the Biosphere: Stewardship of GreenInfrastructure and Urban Ecosystem Services

Erik Andersson, Stephan Barthel, Sara Borgstrom, Johan Colding,

Thomas Elmqvist, Carl Folke, Asa Gren

Abstract Within-city green infrastructure can offer

opportunities and new contexts for people to become

stewards of ecosystem services. We analyze cities as

social–ecological systems, synthesize the literature, and

provide examples from more than 15 years of research

in the Stockholm urban region, Sweden. The social–ecological

approach spans from investigating ecosystem properties to

the social frameworks and personal values that drive and

shape human interactions with nature. Key findings

demonstrate that urban ecosystem services are generated by

social–ecological systems and that local stewards are critically

important. However, land-use planning and management

seldom account for their role in the generation of urban

ecosystem services. While the small scale patchwork of

land uses in cities stimulates intense interactions across

borders much focus is still on individual patches. The results

highlight the importance and complexity of stewardship of

urban biodiversity and ecosystem services and of the

planning and governance of urban green infrastructure.

Keywords Biodiversity � Ecosystem services �Property rights � Stewardship � Urban ecology �Urban social–ecological systems

INTRODUCTION

The rate of urban growth is unprecedented. The Earth

System has become urbanized in the sense that decisions

by the majority of the human population now living in

cities affect the resilience of the entire planet (Seto et al.

2011). Urban demand for ecosystem services is a major

driver behind global environmental change but the choices

people make are often disconnected from their environ-

mental imprint in distant places (Folke et al. 1997; Grimm

et al. 2008). Much of urban growth has been at the expense

of the capacity of terrestrial and marine systems to generate

and sustain essential ecosystem services (Foley et al. 2005)

and is currently challenging biophysical planetary bound-

aries for the world as we know it (Rockstrom et al. 2009).

There is an urgent need to reconnect people in urban areas

to the biosphere (Folke et al. 2011).

Contemporary society, urban lifestyles, and changes,

such as the decline of traditional land uses in the peri-urban

landscape, have changed the way people in cities perceive

and interact with the biosphere (Turner et al. 2004). The

physical and mental distance between urban consumers and

the ecosystems supporting them mask the ecological

implications of choices made (Rees and Wackernagel

1996; Folke et al. 1997). Instead of oblivious consumers,

cities need engaged stewards that can help redirect urban-

ization into a driver of positive change for humanity and

the life-supporting systems that we depend upon. But how

can people living in cities with urban lifestyles be recon-

nected to the biosphere? How do we ensure sustainable

generation, management, and governance of ecosystem

services for human well-being in cities, as well as ensure

that cities contribute to incentives for better stewardship of

distant landscapes and seascapes?

Though providing but a fraction of the ecosystem ser-

vices consumed, urban landscapes represent key arenas for

learning about the way humans interact with the environ-

ment and what sustainable ecosystem stewardship might

entail (Miller 2005; Chapin et al. 2010). The focus of this

paper is on lessons learnt for stewardship of ecosystem

services within urban social–ecological systems (Berkes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of thisarticle (doi:10.1007/s13280-014-0506-y) contains supplementarymaterial, which is available to authorized users.

� The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

www.kva.se/en 123

AMBIO 2014, 43:445–453

DOI 10.1007/s13280-014-0506-y

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0506-y

and Folke 1998). We draw on more than 15 years of

empirical work within cities in relation to ecosystem ser-

vice generation in urban landscapes, particularly regulating

ecosystem services, and their stewardship with enabling

institutions (e.g., property rights), social networks and

involvement of local user groups and civil society in green

area management and governance. Our work in the

Stockholm urban landscape, Sweden, has helped reveal

green areas and ecosystem services not previously per-

ceived in urban planning and clarified mismatches between

institutions, governance, and urban ecosystems for human

well-being (Electronic Supplementary Material, Appendix

S1). We emphasize that an urban social–ecological approach

(Electronic Supplementary Material, Appendix S2) reduces

the tension between conservation and city expansion and

provides directions for shifting urbanization patterns toward

sustainability. We recognize that most of our empirical work

is from one particular city set in a certain context, but

believe that our concluding propositions for urban resilience

building can communicate with other cities and inspire

theoretical discussions.

URBAN SOCIAL–ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

The Urban Landscape

Often, green space in urban areas can be remnants of a

cultural landscape with biodiversity-rich habitats (Barthel

et al. 2005). Many cities incorporate prime habitats that

sometimes are rare in the larger region. For example, in

regions where land-use intensification has led to loss of

landscape diversity and habitats, such as ponds and non-

cultivated elements, cities subjected to other drivers have

become refuges for species associated with these habitats

(Colding and Folke 2009). However, biodiversity and

landscape heterogeneity in cities should not only be seen in

relation to surrounding hinterlands. Urban landscapes have

evolved under extremely complex influences of changing

land uses and management practices, sustaining some

habitats and fundamentally altering others. We need a

detailed understanding of what ‘‘green’’ infrastructure

really means in the urban context as well as how the values

have come to be (Kinzig et al. 2005; Colding et al. 2006).

Cities are rife with ‘‘novel ecosystems’’ (Hobbs et al.

2006), which deserve to be acknowledged for the values

they possess in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem ser-

vices. Comprehensive analyses of urban green spaces have

shown that land uses such as private and public gardens,

cemeteries, old brown-fields, and golf courses may con-

tribute significantly to ecosystem services provided by the

urban landscape (Colding et al. 2006; Goddard et al. 2010).

Incentives, interests, and ambitions among managers and

stakeholders and the institutional framework set the stage

for management of such spaces and their ecosystem ser-

vices (Andersson et al. 2007). Over time, this close inter-

action between human actors, the social context in which

they are embedded and the landscape may lead to biodi-

versity-rich systems maintained as much by human stew-

ardship (Barthel et al. 2005, 2010), the protection of land

by the state (Borgstrom 2009), civil society, and socio-

economic factors (Hope et al. 2003) as by ecological

processes.

Urban landscape mosaics are often characterized by

small land-use patches and high heterogeneity. It has been

suggested that landscape structure becomes ecologically

important only when a certain habitat drops below a

threshold level coverage (Andren 1994). This means that

spatial structure becomes a key concern in cities, both as

ecological networks and adjoining areas (Colding 2007;

Andersson and Bodin 2009). Even if there are calls for

more integrated landscape approaches in urban planning

(Poiani et al. 2000), those commonly concern the large

scale green structure and as a result leave out the potential

and small scale patches within the built up areas (Colding

et al. 2006). These integrated approaches also have to

overcome the organization of urban policy that is charac-

terized by a multitude of separate sectors and that fail to

acknowledge the complexity of urban social–ecological

systems (Runhaar et al. 2009). Issues relating to urban

ecosystem services involve a wide range of actors seldom

adding up to a comprehensive whole (Ernstson et al. 2010).

Furthermore, when addressing issues of biodiversity,

both urban planning and nature conservation policies tend

to focus on the establishment of set-asides using formal

protection with strong focus on threatened species and their

habitats. Such approaches risk reinforcing the land-use

dichotomy of conservation versus exploitation and simply

miss and exclude many ecologically important land uses,

their ecosystem services and the local stewards engaged

(Colding et al. 2006). The location of urban protected areas

is often the result of intricate negotiations between eco-

logical, economic, and social interests. In many cases, the

politics of decision-making processes makes it more diffi-

cult to muster arguments for protection and ecological

recognition of such areas that are make sure that sites

attractive for urban real-estate developers (Ernstson et al.

2008; Borgstrom 2009).

Ecosystem Service in Urban Areas

Green infrastructure in cities generates a diversity of eco-

system services (Jansson and Nohrstedt 2001). While we

begin to understand the importance of urban green areas we

still have a limited understanding of the mechanisms

behind the generation of urban ecosystem services. The

446 AMBIO 2014, 43:445–453

123� The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com

www.kva.se/en

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0506-y

http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0506-y

most commonly articulated link between urban green space

and human well-being in current urban planning is through

so called cultural services, e.g., recreation and health

(Tzoulas et al. 2007). Also provisioning services, like food

production in, for example, home gardens (Altieri et al.

1999; Krasny and Tidball 2009) and links to biodiversity

conservation have been in focus (Goddard et al. 2010; van

Heezik et al. 2012).

The studies reported here focus on the link to human

well-being through regulating ecosystem services, such as

seed dispersal, pest regulation, and pollination. These ser-

vices are generated by complex interactions in urban

social–ecological systems, and not by ecosystems alone

(Andersson et al. 2007) as human activities may both

promote service providers (Kremen 2005) and make ser-

vices available to the beneficiaries (Fig. 1). This serves to

illustrate the connection between biodiversity and ecosys-

tem services (Kremen 2005) and the role of biodiversity for

social–ecological resilience also in urban areas.

Many ecosystem services need to be locally provided in

urban landscapes for easy access and use by a greater set of

city-inhabitants, e.g., daily nature encounters, noise reduc-

tion, absorption of pollutants in water and air. The small size

of many urban land-use patches make it difficult if not

impossible to promote the generation of the full range of

desired ecosystem services within individual patches. A

closer investigation of regulating services reveals spatial and

temporal interdependencies seldom recognized by gover-

nance structures. Many regulating services, including seed

dispersal, pest regulation, and pollination, are not restricted

to the areas where they originate but transcend habitat

boundaries and affect also the surrounding landscape

(Jansson and Polasky 2010; Blitzer et al. 2012). Such ser-

vices may depend on functional connectivity (Fahrig et al.

2011) between different habitats, implying that a landscape

perspective on management and planning for urban eco-

system services is often necessary (Colding 2007; Ernstson

et al. 2010).

For example, Lundberg et al. (2008) showed how the

preservation of a highly valued recreational oak-dominated

landscape benefits from seed dispersing birds that also need

coniferous forest. The coniferous forests tend to be located

outside the recreational landscape and separated from it by

administrative boundaries. Jansson and Polasky (2010)

quantified the change in an ecosystem service over time and

demonstrated how temporal dynamics may unintentionally

erode the capacity to grow alternative crops in an agricultural

system. Non-cultivated lands together with rape fields could

sustain pollination and pollinator diversity, but were insuf-

ficient in themselves to maintain all pollinator species during

periods of cereal production. The study showed how failure

to address such dynamics eroded social–ecological resil-

ience. By losing some of the pollinator species, the potential

for response diversity diminished, making the regulating

Fig. 1 Local user groups and stewardship of regulating ecosystem services in urban green areas. a Domestic gardens support biodiversity and

species of significance in, e.g., pest control and seed dispersal (photo Carl Folke). b Allotment gardens provide critical habitats and food sources

during vulnerable animal life history stages (photo Stephan Barthel). c Community gardens generate ecosystem services like pollination that spill

over into the wider landscape (photo Johan Colding). d Urban golf courses function as stepping stones for keystone species with ponds hosting

amphibians including endangered and keystone species (photo Stefan Lundberg). (e) Trees improve air quality and sequester carbon (photo Azote).

f Green spaces within cities consist of remnants of biodiversity-rich cultural habitats in an otherwise fragmented landscape (photo Jakob Lundberg)

AMBIO 2014, 43:445–453 447


www.kva.se/en 123

service more vulnerable to disturbance and change (Elmqvist

et al. 2003).

The appreciation of green infrastructures in cities is

often manifested in higher house prices close to green areas

(Wittemyer et al. 2008). But appreciation and use as they

are expressed today raise concerns about the long-term

generation of ecosystem services and in particular regu-

lating ecosystem services. For example, when green areas

attract adjoining urban development they risk becoming

isolated and thereby losing some of the biodiversity and

related services that made them attractive in the first place

(Borgstrom et al. 2012). Furthermore, high human popu-

lation density and limited space in cities often result in

demand for multifunctionality of green space, where

stewardship of ecosystem services is confronted with

multiple objectives, meanings, and conflicting interests

(Borgstrom 2009; Ernstson and Sorlin 2009).

The Formation of Stewardship of Urban Ecosystem

Services

Increasing people’s awareness of how their actions impact

the biosphere is not just a matter of close proximity to green

areas, stewardship is about getting involved, which in turn

may be facilitated by institutional designs and social

movements. Today’s institutions poorly match current

changes in urban ecosystems (see Fig. 2; Borgstrom et al.

2006). Prospects for governance of urban ecosystem ser-

vices, which strongly benefit from local stakeholder

involvement, are becoming further limited when property

rights systems change due to urbanization. Property right

dynamics shaping human relationships to land can be quite

influential, e.g., by helping counteract the growing discon-

nection of urban residents from nature (Pyle 1978). How-

ever, property right arrangements for the green infrastructure

that produce urban ecosystem services seldom receive

attention in urban settings in competition with other land

uses. The global trend of privatization of public land in cities

(Lee and Webster 2006) restricts people’s ability to practi-

cally engage with urban ecosystems and their services, and if

associated with loss of diversity this development might

constrain the capacity to deal with change in effective ways.

Common property systems, by which groups or a community

of resource users share a common interest in resource man-

agement (Ostrom 1990), are rare in relation to urban eco-

systems. This further reduces the opportunity for people and

groups in cities to have meaningful interaction and provide

stewardship of their local ecosystems (Andersson et al. 2007;

Colding and Barthel 2013).

Diverse and new forms of property rights arrangements

hold potential to play a much greater role in stewardship of

urban landscapes than has hitherto been recognized (Colding

and Barthel 2013). Furthermore, institutional diversity may

not only increase diversity of land management approaches

(Andersson et al. 2007), but also enhance self-organization

of urban systems to adaptively deal with change, i.e., their

social–ecological resilience (Folke et al. 2003). As institu-

tional research suggests, having a multitude of property

rights regimes that fit the cultural, economic, and geographic

context in which they are to function (Hanna et al. 1996)

appears also to be critical for resilience building of cities

(Colding and Barthel 2013).

Fig. 2 Comparatively little attention is paid to the meso-scale and cross-scale interactions are not recognized among planners and managers of

urban green infrastructure (from Borgstrom et al. 2006)

448 AMBIO 2014, 43:445–453


www.kva.se/en

An important motivation for civic groups, at least the

more affluent, to engage in stewardship of ecosystems in

urban landscapes is sense-of-place, memory, and meaning

(Andersson et al. 2007; Barthel et al. 2010). Social–eco-

logical memory encapsulates the means by which knowl-

edge, experience, and practice of ecosystem stewardship

are captured, stored, revived, and transmitted through time

(Barthel et al. 2010). For instance, in collectively managed

gardens, community engagement results in a shared history

manifested in artifacts, locally adapted organisms, trees,

landscape features, and written accounts (Nazarea 2006;

Barthel et al. 2010). These objects tend to outlive the

practices that first shaped them and function as shared

memory carriers between people and across generations

(Barthel et al. 2010). Different forms of participation also

carry shared memories, such as exchange of seeds for

planting and oral traditions, which in combination with

physical objects guide a portfolio of practices for how to

deal with a changing social–ecological context, and local

responses to such fluctuations. For instance, in some garden

communities, a small percentage of 1 year’s harvest is

often saved for the next planting. Over time, this enhances

the probability of locally adapted varieties of crops co-

evolved with human practices and local environmental

conditions. Social–ecological memory in collectively

managed gardens, for example, is favorable for the con-

servation of ecosystem service providers (Kremen 2005)

normally associated with rural landscapes.

Current urban green spaces tend primarily to be man-

aged at the local scale, where within-site qualitative char-

acteristics are the focus (Borgstrom et al. 2006; Andersson

et al. 2007; Ernstson et al. 2010). However, the spatial and

temporal dynamics of ecosystem services often demand co-

operation and co-ordination across the landscape and

administrative boundaries. Also, the full potential com-

plexity of local engagement becomes evident first at an

aggregate level (Fig. 3). User groups interact and form

social networks whose structures may both facilitate and

constrain collective action towards ecosystem management

and stewardship (Ernstson et al. 2008, 2010). The forma-

tion of co-management is channeled through the ability of

civil society organization to build alliances between each

other, and to government departments. It has been found

that there are often more contacts between managers han-

dling the same kind of area (e.g., cemeteries) than between

neighboring green space managers, implying a neglect of

plausible spatial ecological connections (Borgstrom et al.

2006; Ernstson et al. 2010). Actors able to connect over

these boundaries, called brokers, are crucial as they greatly

increase the opportunities for a diversity of actor groups to

meet and exchange experiences. As historical (Walker

2007) and social movement research has indicated (Ansell

2003; Ernstson et al. 2008), urban green areas attracting a

high diversity of interest and user groups seem to have

higher chances of being protected and creating a social

environment that nurture stewardship of ecosystem ser-

vices because of increased potential for effective collective

action and combination of knowledge and skills.

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

FOR RECONNECTING URBAN AREAS

TO THE BIOSPHERE

The understanding of how urban ecosystems work, how

they change, and what limits their performance, can add to

the understanding of ecosystem change and governance in

general in an ever more human-dominated world with

implications for Earth Stewardship (Chapin et al. 2010).

The high concentration of people, the diverse preferences

that individuals, groups, business, and the state have for the

city and the various demands for ecosystem services will

cause continuous tension, which urban planning systems

should be set up to handle. The importance and potential of

urban planning also highlight the need for more research in

the resource scarce cities of the Global south where the role

played by planning is smaller.

Biodiversity and ecosystem services in urban landscapes

are generated by complex interactions between ecological

processes and human activities and organization. In an

attempt to tackle this complexity, the scope of the research

reported here includes social science in combination with

systems ecology, ranging from local ecological knowledge

as a strong connector between people and their environ-

ment to issues like learning, social memory, property

rights, social movements, social justice, and cultural nar-

ratives. We have also highlighted the importance of

including governance perspectives of legal protection, of

actors in civil society, of brokers, and of environmental

movements in the co-production of ecosystem services and

biodiversity and the challenges of overcoming mismatches

between the social and ecological systems both in space

and time. This broad social–ecological approach on urban

ecology has yielded a number of findings that should be of

interest for this booming field of research:

(1) Current urban planning strategies often fail to acknowl-

edge ecological and social synergies. Distinct social–

ecological dynamics in seemingly similar patches

result in quite different and potentially complementing

profiles of biodiversity and ecosystem services that

might be lost if this stewardship is not understood or

nurtured.

(2) Small-scale land-use heterogeneity makes spatial orga-

nization especially important. The length and diversity

of borders, biophysical as well as administrative, call for

AMBIO 2014, 43:445–453 449


www.kva.se/en 123

careful thinking to make sure adjacency effects are

positive and that regulating ecosystem services reach

across the urban landscapes.

(3) Cities hold unexplored potential for new urban spatial

designs that integrate ecosystem services in the built

environment, for restoring degraded ecosystems and for

strengthening ecosystem functions through complemen-

tary designs of land use and urban green structures.

(4) Mismatches between social and ecological boundaries

are prevalent. The meso-scale between local and

regional is insufficiently addressed. Governance struc-

tures are needed that connect local experiential

knowledge of ecosystem management with those of

higher scale understanding. In such arrangements, the

broker position in social networks should be identified

and strengthened since it may be needed to link

ecosystem stewards across scales, and on different

sides of sectoral and administrative borders.

(5) Different property rights lead to differences in

practices, willingness to invest and learn about the

system. Short-term tenure is more flexible while long

term may lead to in-depth, situated knowledge and

investment in restoration.

(6) Participatory management approaches are critical for

harnessing the diversity found within cities. These

draw on diversity in the skill-bases that people and

groups possess and also have the potential to provide

more effective urban ecosystem management by

taking into account multiple ways of knowing and

evaluating urban land.

Fig. 3 To support the continuous generation of urban ecosystem services, governance structures are needed that connect local experiential

knowledge of ecosystem management with those of higher scale understanding outlined in the figure. In such arrangements, the broker position

in social networks should be identified and strengthened since it may be needed to link ecosystem stewards across scales, and on different sides of

sectoral and administrative boarders. Such scale-crossing brokers might be complemented with more ecologically focused mid-scale managers

(Ernstson et al. 2010) (figure from Ernstson et al. 2010)

450 AMBIO 2014, 43:445–453


www.kva.se/en

Cities could become laboratories where management

strategies and governance structures for ecosystem stew-

ardship are tested and evaluated. As most cities are not

directly dependent on having all (especially provisioning)

ecosystem services generated within-city boundaries, they

are comparatively safe spaces for testing new governance

structures and management practices within the domains

where urban planning and design operate. For example,

cities might be the best places to seek the answer to how

diverse and contested interests in combination with limited

space might be navigated to establish multifunctional land

uses, an issue that will become increasingly important in

many different social–ecological systems.

Cities arguably need to reduce their ecological footprint,

but perhaps more importantly the character of the footprint

need to change. A crucial step is to provide within-city

opportunities for responsible stewardship to help reconnect

citizens to the biosphere. In general, the promotion of ‘‘cog-

nitive resilience building’’ for ecosystem stewardship in urban

areas is central (Colding and Barthel 2013). It implies the

perceptions, memory, and reasoning that people acquire from

frequent interactions with local ecosystems, shaping peoples’

experiences, world views, and values toward local ecosystems

and ultimately toward the biosphere. To achieve institutional

changes, further studies are needed to explore the wider

political processes that shape and promote how biophysical

processes become articulated as of value, for example through

the use of framings like ecosystem services. In a world where

soon two-thirds of the population will live in cities both the

individual and institutional level of analysis is of fundamental

importance. Together with further research on the ecological

underpinnings of ecosystem services, not least the cultural,

future long-term urban social–ecological research must deepen

our understanding of whether and how local stewardship and

engagement in practical management of green infrastructures

increase biodiversity and availability of ecosystem services in

metropolitan landscapes, and if and how it actually stimulates a

wider awareness and articulation of our global reliance on

ecosystem services and results in an urban footprint both

smaller and less detrimental to the resilience of the biosphere.

Acknowledgments We would like to thank all our co-authors, in

particular Henrik Ernstson, Karin Ahrne and Jakob Lundberg. The

original research was made possible by PhD-grants from the

Department of Systems Ecology, Stockholm University, and by funds

granted by The Swedish Research Council for the Environment,

Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS), among them

Urban Form-project and the SUPER-project (Colding, Barthel and

Andersson), Urban Biodiversity – patterns and processes (Andersson),

and through the Center of Excellence (FORMAS) (Gren).

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the

Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, dis-

tribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original

author(s) and the source are credited.

REFERENCES

Altieri, M.A., N. Companioni, K. Canizares, C. Murphy, P. Rosset,

M. Bourque, and C.I. Nicholls. 1999. The greening of the

‘‘barrios’’: Urban agriculture for food security in Cuba. Agri-

culture and Human Values 16: 131–140.

Andersson, E., and O. Bodin. 2009. Practical tool for landscape

planning? An empirical investigation of network based models

of habitat fragmentation. Ecography 32: 123–132.

Andersson, E., S. Barthel, and K. Ahrne. 2007. Measuring social–

ecological dynamics behind the generation of ecosystem

services. Ecological Applications 17: 1267–1278.

Andren, H. 1994. Effects of habitat fragmentation on birds and

mammals in landscapes with different proportions of suitable

habitat—A review. Oikos 71: 355–366.

Ansell, C.K. 2003. Community embeddedness and collaborative

governance in the San Francisco Bay Area Environmental

Movement. In Social movements and networks—Relational

approaches to collective action, ed. M. Diani, and D. McAdam,

123–144. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Barthel, S., J. Colding, T. Elmqvist, and C. Folke. 2005. History and

local management of a biodiversity-rich, urban, cultural land-

scape. Ecology and Society 10: 10.

Barthel, S., C. Folke, and J. Colding. 2010. Social–ecological memory

in gardening: Retaining the capacity for management of

ecosystem services. Global Environmental Change 20: 255–265.

Berkes, F., and C. Folke. 1998. Linking social and ecological systems:

Management practices and social mechanisms for building

resilience. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Blitzer, E.J., C.F. Dormann, A. Holzschuh, A.-M. Kleind, T.A. Rand,

and T. Tscharntke. 2012. Spillover of functionally important

organisms between managed and natural habitats. Agriculture,

Ecosystems and Environment 146: 34–43.

Borgstrom, S.T. 2009. Patterns and challenges of urban nature

conservation—A study of southern Sweden. Environment and

Planning A 41: 2671–2685.

Borgstrom, S.T., T. Elmqvist, P. Angelstam, and C. Alfsen-Norodom.

2006. Scale mismatches in management of urban landscapes.

Ecology and Society 11: 16.

Borgstrom, S., S.A.O. Cousins, and R. Lindborg. 2012. Outside the

boundary—Land use changes in the surroundings of urban

nature reserves. Applied Geography 32: 350–359.

Chapin, F.S., S.R. Carpenter, G.P. Kofinas, C. Folke, N. Abel, W.C.

Clark, P. Olsson, D.M. Stafford Smith, et al. 2010. Ecosystem

stewardship: Sustainability strategies for a rapidly changing

planet. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 25: 241–249.

Colding, J. 2007. ‘‘Ecological land-use complementation’’ for build-

ing resilience in urban ecosystems. Landscape and Urban

Planning 81: 46–55.

Colding, J., and S. Barthel. 2013. The potential of ‘‘Urban Green

Commons’’ in the resilience building of cities. Ecological

Economics 86: 156–166.

Colding, J., and C. Folke. 2009. The role of golf courses in

biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management. Ecosys-

tems 12: 191–206.

Colding, J., J. Lundberg, and C. Folke. 2006. Incorporating green-area

user groups in urban ecosystem management. AMBIO 35: 237–

244.

Elmqvist, T., C. Folke, M. Nystrom, G. Peterson, J. Bengtsson, B.

Walker, and J. Norberg. 2003. Response diversity, ecosystem

change, and resilience. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environ-ment 1: 488–494.

Ernstson, H., and S. Sorlin. 2009. Weaving protective stories: Connec-

tive practices to articulate holistic values in the Stockholm National

Urban Park. Environment and Planning A 41: 1460–1479.

AMBIO 2014, 43:445–453 451


www.kva.se/en 123

Ernstson, H., S. Sorlin, and T. Elmqvist. 2008. Social movements and

ecosystem services—The role of social network structure in

protecting and managing urban green areas in Stockholm.

Ecology and Society 13: 39.

Ernstson, H., S. Barthel, E. Andersson, and S.T. Borgstrom. 2010.

Scale-crossing brokers and network governance of urban ecosystem

services: The case of Stockholm, Sweden. Ecology and Society 15: 28.

Fahrig, L., J. Baudry, L. Brotons, F.G. Burel, T.O. Crist, R.J. Fuller,

C. Sirami, G.M. Siriwardena, et al. 2011. Functional landscape

heterogeneity and animal biodiversity in agricultural landscapes.

Ecology Letters 14: 101–122.

Foley, J.A., R. DeFries, G.P. Asner, C. Barford, G. Bonan, S.R.

Carpenter, F.S. Chapin, M.T. Coe, et al. 2005. Global conse-

quences of land use. Science 309: 570–574.

Folke, C., A. Jansson, J. Larsson, and R. Costanza. 1997. Ecosystem

appropriation by cities. AMBIO 26: 167–172.

Folke, C., J. Colding, and F. Berkes. 2003. Building resilience and

adaptive capacity in social–ecological systems. In Navigating

social–ecological systems: Building resilience for complexity

and change, ed. C. Folke, F. Berkes, and J. Colding, 352–387.

Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Folke, C., A. Jansson, J. Rockstrom, P. Olsson, S.R. Carpenter, F.S.

Chapin, A.-S. Crepin, G. Daily, et al. 2011. Reconnecting to the

biosphere. AMBIO 40: 719–738.

Goddard, M.A., A.J. Dougill, and T.G. Benton. 2010. Scaling up from

gardens: Biodiversity conservation in urban environments.

Trends in Ecology & Evolution 25: 90–98.

Grimm, N.B., S.H. Faeth, N.E. Golubiewski, C.L. Redman, J. Wu, X.

Bai, and J.M. Briggs. 2008. Global change and the ecology of

cities. Science 319: 756–760.

Hanna, S., C. Folke, and K.-G. Maler. 1996. Rights to nature:

Ecological, economic, cultural, and political principles of

institutions for the environment. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Hobbs, R.J., S. Arico, J. Aronson, J.S. Baron, P. Bridgewater, V.A.

Cramer, P.R. Epstein, J.J. Ewel, et al. 2006. Novel ecosystems:

Theoretical and management aspects of the new ecological

world order. Global Ecology and Biogeography 15: 1–7.

Hope, D., C. Gries, W.X. Zhu, W.F. Fagan, C.L. Redman, N.B.

Grimm, A.L. Nelson, C. Martin, et al. 2003. Socioeconomics

drive urban plant diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy

of Sciences of the United States of America 100: 8788–8792.

Jansson, A., and P. Nohrstedt. 2001. Carbon sinks and human

freshwater dependence in Stockholm County. Ecological Eco-

nomics 39: 361–370.

Jansson, A., and S. Polasky. 2010. Quantifying biodiversity for

building resilience for food security in urban areas: Getting

down to business. Ecology and Society 15: 20.

Kinzig, A.P., P. Warren, C. Martin, D. Hope, and M. Katti. 2005. The

effects of human socioeconomic status and cultural characteris-

tics on urban patterns of biodiversity. Ecology and Society 10: 23.

Krasny, M., and K. Tidball. 2009. Community gardens as contexts for

science, stewardship, and civic action learning. Cities and the

Environment 2: 8.

Kremen, C. 2005. Managing ecosystem services: What do we need to

know about their ecology? Ecology Letters 8: 468–479.

Lee, S., and C. Webster. 2006. Enclosure of the urban commons.

GeoJournal 66: 27–42.

Lundberg, J., E. Andersson, G. Cleary, and T. Elmqvist. 2008.

Linkages beyond borders: Targeting spatial processes in frag-

mented urban landscapes. Landscape Ecology 23: 717–726.

Miller, J.R. 2005. Biodiversity conservation and the extinction of

experience. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 20: 430–434.

Nazarea, D.V. 2006. Local knowledge and memory in biodiversity

conservation. Annual Review of Anthropology 35: 317–335.

Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the commons: The evolution of

institutions for collective action, 280. New York: Cambridge

University Press.

Poiani, K.A., B.D. Richter, M.G. Anderson, and H.E. Richter. 2000.

Biodiversity conservation at multiple scales: Functional sites,

landscapes, and networks. BioScience 50: 133–146.

Pyle, R.M. 1978. The extinction of experience. Horticulture 56:

64–67.

Rees, W.E., and M. Wackernagel. 1996. Urban ecological footprints:

Why cities cannot be sustainable—And why they are a key to

sustainability. In Our ecological footprint, reducing human

impact on the earth, ed. M. Wackernagel, and W.E. Rees,

223–248. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers.

Rockstrom, J., W. Steffen, K. Noone, A. Persson, F.S. Chapin, E.F.

Lambin, T.M. Lenton, M. Scheffer, et al. 2009. A safe operating

space for humanity. Nature 461: 472–475.

Runhaar, H.A.C., P.P.J. Driessen, and L. Soer. 2009. Scientific

commons: Sustainable urban development and the challenge of

policy integration: An assessment of planning tools for integrat-

ing spatial and environmental planning in the Netherlands.

Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 36:

417–431.

Seto, K.C., M. Fragkias, B. Guneralp, and M.K. Reilly. 2011. A meta-

analysis of global urban land expansion. PLoS ONE 6: e23777.

Turner, W.R., T. Nakamura, and M. Dinetti. 2004. Global urbaniza-

tion and the separation of humans from nature. BioScience 54:

585–590.

Tzoulas, K., K. Korpela, S. Venn, V. Yli-Pelkonen, A. Kazmierczak,

J. Niemela, and P. James. 2007. Promoting ecosystem and

human health in urban areas using green infrastructure: A

literature review. Landscape and Urban Planning 8: 167–178.

van Heezik, Y.M., K.J.M. Dickinson, and C. Freeman. 2012. Closing

the gap: Communicating to change, gardening practices in

support of native biodiversity in urban private gardens. Ecology

and Society 17: 34.

Walker, C. 2007. Redistributive land reform: For what and for whom?

In The land question in South Africa: The challenge of

transformation and redistribution, ed. L. Ntsebeza, and R. Hall,

132–151. Cape Town: HSRC Press.

Wittemyer, G., P. Elsen, W.T. Bean, A. Coleman, O. Burton, and J.S.

Brashares. 2008. Accelerated human population growth at

protected areas edges. Science 321: 123–126.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

Erik Andersson (&) PhD, is a research fellow and project PI at

Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, and the Beijer

Institute of Ecological Economics at the Royal Swedish Academy of

Sciences. His research interests include landscape assessments of

biodiversity and ecosystem services, urban ecology, and linkages

between diversity and resilience.

Address: Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University,

10691 Stockholm, Sweden.

e-mail: [email protected]

Stephan Barthel is a PhD in natural resource management and he

currently works as research leader of a group of scholars that study

urban social–ecological systems at Stockholm Resilience Centre. His

research revolves around management and design of urban ecosystem

services and which role ecosystems play for urban peoples abilities to

cognitive connect with natural environments and also historical

studies that focus on the role of proximate agricultures for urban food

security. He draws on theories developed in urban ecology, anthro-

pology, environmental psychology, and urban geography.

452 AMBIO 2014, 43:445–453


www.kva.se/en




Sara Borgstrom PhD, is a researcher at Stockholm Resilience Cen-

tre, Stockholm University. Her research interests include urban

ecology and governance in human-dominated landscapes.




Johan Colding is Associate Professor in Natural Resource Manage-

ment, focusing on the study of urban ecosystems, institutions, bio-

diversity conservation and urban design, and land-use planning. He is

currently active at the Beijer Institute and serves as co-leader for

urban research at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Address: The Beijer Institute, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences,

PO Box 50005, 10405 Stockholm, Sweden.


Thomas Elmqvist is Professor at Stockholm Resilience Centre. His

research focuses on governance and management of ecosystem ser-

vices in urban landscapes, ecosystem services and values, biodiversity

in ecosystem dynamics, land use change, natural disturbances, and

components of resilience including the role of social institutions. He

is involved in a number of international interdisciplinary projects

dealing with understanding urbanization as a social–ecological pro-

cess.




Carl Folke Professor and Director of the Beijer Institute, the Royal

Swedish Academy of Sciences and founder and director of science of

the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, is a leading

scientist in resilience thinking and research on social–ecological

systems.






Asa Gren PhD, is employed as researcher at the Beijer Institute of

Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Her

main research focus is on the quantification and valuation of eco-

system services over space and time, using, e.g., spatial analysis as a

tool. She focuses on the functional role of biodiversity in the gener-

ation of ecosystem services and building of resilience. She also

employs the lens of food security and sustainable urban planning for

studying sustainable urban development.




AMBIO 2014, 43:445–453 453


www.kva.se/en 123

reconnecting cities to the biosphere: stewardship …...reconnecting cities to the biosphere:...

Documents